260 J. G. BOTJEINOT 



promontory of Cape North, there is the fine harbour of St. Anne's, which at one time was 

 nearly chosen the capital of Cape Breton, then He Royale, and is in its natural aspect 

 more interesting than Louisbourg on account of the sublime vistas of forest-clad hills and 

 of the great ocean far beyond. The Bras d'Or lake is connected at the east with the 

 Gulf by means of two guts or straits known as the great and the little Bras d'Or entrances 

 — one running to the north and the other to the south of the fine island of Bouiarderie 

 which is a long narrow tract of land now inhabited chiefly by Scotch settlers, and which 

 was also called in French times the lie de Verderonne, until it came to be better known 

 by the name of its first proprietor, a French gentleman who served with distinction in the 

 French navy and at Port Royal in Acadie.^ At several points on the lake from St. Peter's 

 to Sydney, there are many features of interest to attract the tourist. The picturesque nar- 

 rows which connect the two lakes, is now crossed by a graceful drawbridge of iron, over 

 which the railway passes from the Strait of Canso to the capital town of Cape Breton. 

 At this point you catch many charming glimpses of the expansive lake and the dim hills 

 which stretch far to the north and west. Baddeck, strictly speaking Bedek,- an old Micmac 

 name changed by the French to Bedeque, is a charming little harbour where a sum- 

 mer retreat has been made on the slopes and plateaus of the hills which rise from the 

 water's edge. Here Charles Dudley Warner dipped his pen to describe its charms in his 

 humorous vein, and now science finds its representative in the inventor of the telephone 

 who has raised his laboratory in this sylvan retreat, and finds the rest he needs by cruising 

 in the devious channels and bays of these beauteous inland waters. The sail from this 

 pretty spot through the entrance of the great Bras d'Or offers many a charming vista of 

 cliffs where the gypsum ' mingles its white with the dark green of the overhanging 

 spruce, and where the land rises into lofty hills, with their slopes dotted by cottages on 

 little patches of meadow. Churches, with tapering steeples, all of an unfailing type, 

 square, commodious and ugly, testify to the religious fervour of the inhabitants who 



' The first Frenchman who obtained a grant to settle and develope the fine island at the entrance of the Bras 

 d'Or Lake was Louis Simon de St. Aubin de Poupet, Chevalier de la Bouiarderie, who had been nistignede rmnDcau 

 in tlie French navy, and distinguished himself as commander of a company in the s«cce.«i5ful defence of Port Royal 

 in 1707 against the New Englanders under Colonel Wainwright. He appears to have been connected with a com- 

 mercial company for the settlement of the islands of Inganiche and Verderonne (now Bouiarderie) and the lands 

 in the vicinity of the little entrance to the Bras d'Or. He died in October, 17Ô8, and was replaced by his ."^on wlio 

 was also in the French navy. The latter was appointed commandant of Inganiche or Port d'Orleans in 174L His 

 establishment at Labrador was burned in 1747 by the French " in order to annoy the English in obedience to the 

 orders of M. de La Galissoniere," the English being then in possession of the island. Why it was necessary to burn 

 a Frenchman's buildings to annoy the English, the summary given in the Canadian Archives of the French docu- 

 ment relating to this affair, does not state, but it appears the French at that locality were submissive to English 

 allegiance, and a.ssisted in supplying the English garrison at Louisbourg with coal. It seems Bouiarderie and his 

 family were reduced to poverty and applied to the French government for relief, when Louisbourg came again 

 into possession of the French. He was given assistance, and was probably the same person who was captured by 

 the English on the day of the landing at Gabarus Bay in 1745, and afterwards rekased by Governor Shirley on his 

 arrival in Boston. He was appointed in 174G a Captain in the French army in Canada. See Murdoch, "Hist, 

 of Nova Scotia, i. 293-360. "Can. Archives," (1SS7), ccxciv, ceci, ccciii-ccciv, cccvi, cccxv, cccxxiv-v, cccxxix, 

 cccxxxii, cccxxxiv, cccxlvi-vii, cccxlvii, " Quebec Doc," iii. 241-374-û92. 



^ Dr. Rand (" Micmac Diet.") gives the correct name as ebëdck. 



' In the marine limestone formation of the island " the gypsum is met rising like a ruined marble palace of 

 Eastern climes from the waters of the Bras d'Or, or frowning in a cliff hollowed into a thousand little caves and 

 recesses by the waves and ice- In the woods, from a distance, it recalU the tented homes of an army, or broods 

 like a dismantled castle over some quiet valley." See E. Gilpin's paper on the Minerals of the Carboniferous (N. S. 

 Inst, of Nat. Sc, 1889.) 



